Milos Forman, Oscar-winning director of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, dies at 86

Milos Forman, the Czech-born movie director who found fame in Hollywood with the Oscar-winning classics One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Amadeus, has died at the age of 86, Czech news agency CTK reported on Saturday.

Forman died on Friday in the United States after a short illness, his wife, Martina, told CTK.

“His departure was calm and he was surrounded the whole time by his family and his closest friends,” she said.

Forman was born in the Czech town of Caslav on February 18, 1932, but moved to the United States after the Communist crackdown on the Prague Spring uprising in 1968. He became a US citizen in the 1970s.

In this file photo taken on March 25, 1985 Czech-born US film director Milos Forman holds up his Oscar trophy for his film 'Amadeus' at the 57th Annual Academy Awards in Hollywood. (AFP)

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, in which a psychiatric institution becomes a microcosm of the contemporary world, and Amadeus, the life of 18th-century composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart through the eyes of his rival Antonio Salieri, earned 13 Oscars between them, including those for best director to Forman.

His other notable work included the rock musical Hair in 1979, Ragtime in 1981 and The People vs Larry Flint in 1996, which was nominated for an Academy Award that year.

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